In the past, accurately billing telephone calls that occur through a service to a calling party was a slow, complex, and difficult process which had a high potential for errors. Prior art billing systems and methods typically rely on a “match and merge” billing system. In general, two main items are needed to perform accurate billing. First, a time duration of a particular event is needed. Secondly, identification of a particular feature that was utilized for this particular event is also needed. Outgoing calls, directory assistance, specialty services (ie. 900 and 976 numbers), and the like are examples of particular features.
For example, consider a user interacting with a voice mail system. In this example, the user listens to a message and desires to call the person that left the message (message leaver). In some prior systems the user would hang up and initiate a second call to the message leaver; such systems are not contemplated here. In other prior systems, the voice mail system can place the call to the message leaver for the user. As a result, the user has two concurrent active calls; a first call to the voice mail system and a second call, from the voice mail system to the message leaver, even though the user does not hang up between these calls. Generally, the telephony service provider desires charging the user for both these calls. One difficulty can arise owing to the location of the message leaver. Presume that the user's call to the voice mail system is a local call, but the call to the message leaver is a long distance call. The telephony service provide desires to charge the caller for the local call and also for the long distance call even though both calls occur at the same time.
The goal is to accurately bill the user for the call originating from the voice mail system to the recipient. In this example, the call from the voice mail system to the recipient allows the user and the recipient to communicate. According to this match and merge billing system, a switch which corresponds to outgoing calls from the voice mail system records a time duration and also a switch start time indicating a start time of this call from the voice mail system to the recipient. Further, the voice mail system records a voice mail start time indicating a start time of the call between the voice mail system and the recipient, and the voice mail system also records that the feature executed by the voice mail system in this example in an outgoing call. Recall that the two items which are essential for accurate billing are the time duration of a particular event and the feature which is utilized for the particular event. In order for the prior art billing systems to know both the required duration time and particular feature, the match and merge billing system must perform a match of the precise switch start time of the switch and the precise voice mail start time of the voice mail system. After a successful match between the switch start time and the voice mail start time, the match and merge billing system must finally merge the time duration and the particular feature of the particular event into a single record.
The prior art match and merge billing system relies on matching the switch start time and the voice mail start time together. Matching the switch start time and the voice mail start time is a somewhat unreliable process because matching the clocks belonging the voice mail system and the switch are very difficult. Additional error correction steps must be performed to increase reliability when matching start times running on different platforms. These additional steps add to the complexity and inefficiency of the prior art match and merge billing system.
The above example illustrates some of the complexities and uncertainty associated with the match and merge billing system. In particular, matching start times in order to accurately bill a single call requires numerous steps related to matching the start times and providing error correction. This results in additional complexity of the match and merge billing system. The complexities and inefficiencies of the match and merge billing system become amplified and even more substantial because many thousands of calls are placed through a service such as a voice mail system and need to be billed each day.
What is needed is an efficient and accurate billing system and method which seamlessly and automatically bills a predetermined telephone line for a call placed by a calling party to a called party through a service. What is further needed is a billing system and method that operates without needing to match start times of two or more services.